Rourke Write-Up

Here's a cut from a beautiful write-up about Mickey Rourke by NYT:

Rourke knows about being hit in the head because, he claimed, he was a Golden Gloves boxer in his teens. He said he had 26 fights and won 20, 17 by knockouts. He planned on making a career of boxing until he suffered a concussion in the ring and "they wouldn't let me fight anymore." So he turned to acting, on a whim, because "I liked that you could escape who you were and be someone else, someone smarter, tougher." When Rourke's movie career tanked in the '90s, he turned back to boxing in his late 30s because, he said, "I'd be less of a man if I didn't react violently to the war in my head."

Photo by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin